Taking TelePresence Everywhere!

At Cisco we believe video has the potential to change how we live, work, play and learn. I consider myself fortunate to lead a team at Cisco that is at the heart of our vision to create amazing experiences that connect people to each other, to their ideas and to the world.

Today, Cisco is the leader in business telepresence technology. 85% of the Fortune 100 uses Cisco TelePresence to bring employees, customers, partners and suppliers together via high-quality lifelike video.

ūmi telepresence has also quickly become the benchmark for high quality video calling in the home. Since we unveiled Cisco ūmi last October, thousands of people have chosen the technology to connect in completely new ways with their friends and family. They are getting together to share the holidays, having family reunions and celebrating birthdays, even if they are thousands of miles away from each other.

We have always believed that high-quality video experiences will be pervasive throughout our professional and personal lives. Today we took a big step forward in delivering on that vision by announcing additions to our umi telepresence product line and interoperability between Cisco Business TelePresence and umi telepresence in the home.

The new additions to the umi product family include our new umi 720, which offers a best-in-class video calling experience that people have come to expect from Cisco but at a lower price point and requiring less bandwidth.

We also introduced ūmi Connect for PCs and Macs to extend the umi experience to the desktop. ūmi Connect is available as a free download. Products trials are progressing well and both products will be available early this summer. We also today announced a price reduction for our umi 1080, now available for $499.

Connecting Cisco TelePresence in the workplace to ūmi in the home has significant implications and opens up a huge opportunity for businesses, government, and education institutions to provide services through high-definition immersive video experiences.

The possibilities are endless. Doctors could consult with patients at home; a teacher in California could interact with a classroom in Asia, and that’s just the beginning. The opportunity is equally significant for service providers, who will have a new class of services to offer, and for consumers who will gain access to services never-before-possible through the lifelike video experience of telepresence, from the comfort of their homes.

The network is now ready to deliver a range of new experiences into the home. We see this as a transformative opportunity to change the way that people live, work, play and learn. The work we’re doing with a city in Asia serves as a great example of what’s possible. The government there is already testing bringing business and citizen services to consumers through their HDTV by connecting Cisco TelePresence in offices with ūmi systems in consumers’ homes.

Video has been a powerful, disruptive technology for both businesses and consumers, and we are incredibly excited about the potential of our expanded ūmi product line to drive further adoption of telepresence technology in the home.

By linking together the home and business telepresence experiences across video ready networks, we believe we can offer additional value-added services that will greatly benefit both businesses and consumers.

For more information on today’s announcement, please visit the press release.

Is it possible for Cisco's leadership to be any more out of touch with the market and their shareholders? Umi was a bust from day one and shows just one of the many missteps this company continues to make. The company is run for one and only one purpose - to make executives rich. I am a ten year shareholder and what do I have for holding the stock for ten years? Zero. They have returned exactly zero dollars to me. Buybacks? What a disaster. The only purpose it has served is to soak up dilution for options grants to execs. Not one of them has ever purchased one share on the open market. Why would they? Why would anyone? This company does not care about shareholders. I cannot say it enough. Do you want to know what is going to be the biggest bust of a product this year? It's called Cius. Nobody is going to buy it. They will package it up with something else and give some away but nobody wants this thing. Why can I see it and Cisco management cannot? Really? You dropped the price on Umi? This is your bold move to get the stock price moving? Is this the new COO making his mark (before he cashes in a few million worth of options)? The most clueless management in corporate America. And the board of directors is in bed with the whole lot. The fox is minding the chicken coop and regular investors trying to save for retirement are getting screwed. The company is finished as we knew it.

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